Like Brother, Like Sister
by FoveroKaiExypno
Summary: Another day, another problem. Everything just gets messier when you add a sister to the mix, apparently.
1. Prologue: A New Beginning

**A/N: Please R&R! This is just the prologue!**

"PERCY!"

"WHAT?"

"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"

"WHY?"

"'CAUSE!"

I chased Percy with a pocket knife around his appartment. We were both 12. Coincidentally, we had the same birthday, which we both found weird. But we were best friends. Almost like siblings. We both had black hair and sea-green eyes. I treated Percy's mom like my mom because I didn't have any family. I'd known Percy since the second grade. We were friends immediately.

Anyway.

"WHY ARE YOU CHASING ME WITH A KNIFE?"

"'CAUSE YOU'RE A MENACE TO SOCIETY!"

"HUH?"

"OH, NEVERMIND!"

"MOOOOOM!"

"What?"

"JESS IS CHASING ME WITH A POCKETKNIFE!"

"Jessicah, stop chasing Percy with any sort of sharp or blunt object that could possibly harm him in any way!"

"Awwwwwww!" But I put the knife away and stopped chasing him. Like I said, she was like my mom.

I lived at an orphanage. It was horrible. I freaking hated it... I was always the one they bullied. Maybe it was because I was basically a runt, but still. It was mean.

"Hey, you two, come here!"

"Okay, Mom!" we yelled at the same time and ran to her room were she was. Luckily her husband wasn't home.

She showed us a pamphlet. "What do you think about Yancy?"

"Sound boring and stupid," I said.

"It'll be good for you."

"I agree with Jess," Percy said.

"Too bad; you're both going."

"Fine." I accepted ithout too much hard feelings because I knew it was the best chance for us to actually get something done. We were hopeless in regular schools.

Too bad I didn't know what we were getting ourselves in too, otherwise I would've fought to the death against going there. That's what started everything.


	2. Field Trip!

**A/N: Please R&R guys! PLEASE! AND BRYAN BURKHAM YOU WILL READ THIS**

I ran up to him, my best friend in the whole wide world, Percy Jackson, and stuck my tongue out at him. We were both twelve at that time. Our sixth-grade class was taking a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I know—sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so we both had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he was. He was also the only teacher that didn't put Percy to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once we wouldn't get in trouble, Percy and I.

See, bad things happen to us (mainly Percy) on field trips. Like at our fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, he had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. He supposedly wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course we got expelled anyway (I usually got dragged into it whether it included me or not, just because they saw us as siblings, even though we weren't). And before that, at our fourth-grade school, when we all took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, the idiot hit a lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. I was mad at him for months after that. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea. Bad things tend to happen.

Nancy Bobofit, a freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, kept on hitting Percy's new (since he only met him that year) best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of gross sandwich. He was an easy target. He was scrawny; he cried when he got frustrated. He was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin; frankly, I found it kind of creepy. On top of that, he was a cripple. He had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but you should'a seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew Percy and I couldn't do anything back to her because we were both already on probation (for what is a whole 'nother story; all I can say is that the girl deserved it 'cause she was a jerk). The headmaster had threatened us both with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened this time.

"I'm going to kill her," Percy mumbled.

"Can I help?" I asked hopefully.

"Be my guest."

Grover tried to calm us down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

He dodged another piece.

"That's it." Percy started to get up, but Grover pulled him back to the seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminded Percy. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

"Yeah. Both of us. But still. Can I just smash her skull in a little?" I asked.

They both looked at me like I was insane. "No," they said at the same time. I rolled my eyes.

Later in the day, when we got there, we found out that Mr. Brunner was leading the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old pottery.

I could just tell from one look at his face that it blew Percy's mind that this stuff had survived for thousands of years. I shook my head and rolled my eyes at him.

Mr. Brunner gathered us around a tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. Percy was zoning out because of everyone talking, but when either him or me tried to shut 'em up, Mrs. Dodds glared at us. For some reason, she really unsettled Percy, but not as much as she unsettled Grover; the dude was freaking scared of a cat, let alone a scary teacher.

You see, Mrs. Dodds was this math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was, like, fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured Percy and I were both devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at us and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew we were going to get after-school detention for at least a month.

One time, after she'd made Percy erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, he told Grover and I that he didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at Percy like he was really serious and said, "You're absolutely right." And I said, "She's creepy." Yup. I know. So insightful.

Back at the museum, Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and Percy, sick of it, turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

I have a feeling he didn't mean it to come out that loud.

The whole group laughed at him and Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

His face was red as a tomatoe. He said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele we were then looking at. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

He looked at the carving. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, pretty obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because..."

"Well... Kronos was the king god, and—"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan. And...he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind us. I looked at her and gave her the evil eye and she quieted up fast.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans, and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind us, Nancy mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered. I smirked at Nancy.

"Shut up," she hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had freaking radar ears... Unfortuantely, that meant that I got caught most of the time, too.

Percy shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed for some reason. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses ('cause they were).

All of us were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson, Miss Angelos."

I knew that was coming, as I'm sure Percy did, too.

Percy told Grover to keep going. Then we both turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?" Percy asked.

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told us.

"About the Titans?" Percy asked.

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh," I said. _Well that's no fun._

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson. And the same to you, Jessicah Angelos."

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed us so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected both of us to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that we both have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I know for a fact that Percy had never made above a C- in his life (okay, I had, but that was because I'm awesome).

No—he didn't expect us to be as good; he expected us both to be better than the others. And neither of us could just learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

Percy mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told us to go outside and eat our lunches.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured Percy had this stupid idea that maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas (and he could just be a dope like that sometimes). We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, and wildfires from lightning strikes. I actually wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else besides Percy and I seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Us three sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that_ school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere (even though we were).

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," Percy said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me and Jess sometimes. I mean—we're not geniouses."

"Speak for yourself. I mean, about the genious thing," I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

Percy glared at me. "Smart alec."

"Idiot."

"Jerk."

"Moron."

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give Percy some deep philosophical comment to make him feel better, like he usually does, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

Percy didn't look very hungry any more and let him take it.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a book. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table. I tried hard to keep in my laughs from that.

Percy was about to unwrap his sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of us with her stupid goons (they said they were her friend, but I didn't believe them, so I called them goons)—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at Percy and I with her crooked teeth, trying to provoke us. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I could just tell that Percy was tring to keep his cool, as was I. The school counselor had told us a million times (or more), "Count to ten, get control of your temper." It wasn't working for me.

Next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy and Jessicah pushed me!" I didn't even remember touching her.

Mrs. Dodds suddenly materialized next to us.

I could hear some of the kids whispering: "Did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that we were in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on us. There was triumphant fire in her eyes, as if we'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"

"I know," Percy grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say, the idiot.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her. Not them."

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for us. What the heck? Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But—"

"You—will—stay—here."

Grover looked at Percy desperately.

"It's okay, man," he told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Honeys," Mrs. Dodds barked at us. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

Percy gave her his deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare; I gave her one look that said You're Dead. Then we turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently for us to come on.

_How'd she get there so fast?_ I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me and Percy this was part of the ADHD, our brains misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure that's what it was.

We went after Mrs. Dodds. Halfway up the steps, Percy glanced back at Grover. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

_Okay_, I thought. _She's going to make us buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop._

Apparently not. We followed her deeper into the museum. When we finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.

Percy, of course, did the safe thing. He said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

_She's a teacher,_ I thought nervously. _It's not like she's going to hurt us._

He said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Percy Jackson, Jessicah Angelos," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you two will suffer less pain."

"What?" I asked, totally confused.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

I didn't know what she was talking about at all. All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy we'd been selling out of the dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized Percy and I got our essays on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away our grades. Or worse, they were going to make us read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't..." Percy started.

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

I screamed and hid behind Percy. _What? Why am I hiding behind him? Why do I feel like he can protect me from this...this _thing.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at us.

Percy yelped and dodged, taking me with him; I felt talons slash the air next to my ear. Percy snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit his hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spun toward us with a murderous look in her eyes. She snarled, "Die, honey!"

And flew straight at us.

Absolute terror ran through my body, and I screamed again.

Then a metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. _Hisss!_ Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching us. Percy was holding a sword, the one that made Mrs. Dodds into a stinking beach with no water.

Then we were alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in Percy's hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but us.

My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

"W-what just happened?" I asked Percy shakily.

No answer. He was staring at the pen.

"P-Percy?"

He turned to me. "Hm?"

"I'm scared."

His eyes softened and he pretended not to be freaked out for a moment, for my sake. He went over and hugged me. "It's okay now. She's gone." He was trying to comfort me.

I hugged him back and cried into his shirt for a moment, then sucked it up and stopped. I got my face out of his shirt so it could dry before we went back out. "Thanks, Perce." **(A/N: She calls him this a lot, actually. It's not a typo; she calls him Perce for a nickname instead of Percy, even though Percy is already a nickname.)**

"No problem, Jess," he said, smoothing out my hair and wiping the tears from my eyes, just like a big brother would do.

I smiled at the thought of him being my brother and went back outside with him once his shirt was dried and no traces of me crying were left behind.

It had started to rain. _So letting his shirt dry was basically useless._

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw us, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butts."

Percy said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. Percy asked Nancy what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

Percy then asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at either of us, so I thought he was messing with us.

"Not funny," I told him. "This is serious. She's freaking me out. I gotta know where she is, Grover."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved. We went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson. And Miss Angelos, why do you follow him everywhere? You know what, nevermind. I've decided I don't really want to know."

Percy handed Mr. Brunner his pen, as if he hadn't even noticed it was still in his hand.

"Sir," Percy said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

Brunner stared at him blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher," I tried to clarify.

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, Jessicah, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"


	3. Caution: Old Ladies Snipping Yarn Ahead

**A/N: Please R&R! REVIEW! Please? I'll be your best friend if you do! :) Enjoy**

I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me and Percy. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.

Every so often Percy or I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if we could trip 'em up, but they would stare at us like we were psychologically brain damaged.

It got so that Percy and I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.

Almost. But Grover couldn't fool either of us. When Percy or I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying, as I'm sure Percy did, too.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum. I wouldn't have cried for nothing. I don't cry. Ever.

I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat, and I just knew the same thing was happening with Percy.

The freak weather continued. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in, very weirdly, just mine and Percy's rooms. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year, which was actually the most interesting thing at that school.

I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time, and at that point I didn't really care, but Percy was acting the same way. My grades dropped drastically. I got into fights every day with people I really did NOT like. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class, and so was Percy; every time we tried to talk to each other, the teacher came barging out there to give us another speech we'd both heard way too many times.

Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked Percy for the millionth time why he was too lazy to study for spelling tests, he snapped. He called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good (or, well, bad...it sounded like a bad name to be called).

The headmaster sent Percy's mom a letter the following week, making it official: Neither Percy nor I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

_Fine,_ I told myself. _Just fine._

I was homesick, for Percy's home.

I wanted to be with him and his mom in their little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with Percy's stupid, idiotic, stinky, obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.

And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange, and even though he was mainly Percy's friend.

I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that Percy and I could do well. As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for; me and Percy talked about it and agreed that it was the only one worth it. I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told us about this being life-and-death for us two. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.

_"I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor._

_I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said "... worried about Percy, sir."_

_I froze._

_I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult._

_"...alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too—"_

_"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."_

_"But he may not have time. The summer solstice deadline—"_

_"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."_

_"Sir, he saw her..."_

_"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."_

_"Sir, I...I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."_

_"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"_

_The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor._

_Mr. Brunner was silent._

_I picked up the book and backed down the hall._

_A shadow slid across Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller him, holding something that looked something like an archer's bow._

_I opened the nearest door and slipped inside._

_A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside. A large, dark shape paused, then moved on._

_Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing. My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."_

_"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."_

_"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."_

_"Don't remind me." Then the lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office._

_I waited in the dark forever._

_Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm._

_And there he was, Grover, lying on his bed, studying his Latin notes like he'd been there all night."_

That's what Percy told me. He often told me stories, usually ones that were original, but this sounded like it had really happened. Or, at least, that he thought it had happened.

"Percy." I said, the day of the exams. We were going to class; we had the same classes at the same time.

"Hm?"

"About that story you told me earlier..."

He glanced at Grover, as if he was tring to warn me not to talk about it in front of him, then said, "What about it."

I took the hint easily and said with an overly-cheerful smile, "I loved it!"

"Hey, guys, I gotta go." Grover was talking to us.

"Huh? Why?" I asked.

"I, uh, have to meet someone..."

"Um, okay?" I said, not meaning for it to come out like a question, but I was curious.

He laughed nervously, said bye, then went on down the hall.

"I don't know what that was about, but I'm gonna find out." I started to walk after him, once he had gone a far enough distance away.

"No, Jess, c'mon, let's get to class," Percy said, trying to get me to go with him and leave the situation with Grover alone.

"I wanna know. So I'm gonna find out," I said stubbornly.

"No, Jess-"

I ran off before I could hear the end of his sentence. After that, I walked carefully, barely keeping Grover in my sights and sneaking aorund in the shadows.

Grover turned into a door and I saw that it was Mr. Brunner's. He didn't have a first period, so no one was heading there right then.

I snuck up to the door and listened.

"...she's getting harder to handle," Mr. Brunner said. "She's smart, and she's very clever, but she does NOT want to sit down and be taught."

"I know what you mean," Grover said. "But she's his sister!"

"They're nothing alike, but at the same time, exactly alike," Mr. Brunner said, in that confusing way of his.

_Sister... alike but not... WHAT? Who're they talking about?_

"Jessicah Angelos isn't really Jessicah Angelos is she," Grover said, not a question.

"No," Mr. Brunner said. "She's really Jessicah Jackson. But you cannot let her know this yet. She must find out on her own."

_Jessicah... JACKSON? As in Percy Jackson? "His sister". Are they talking about me and Percy? WHAAAAAAAAA?_

"And why can't we just tell her? I'm sure she'd be ecstatic."

"She has to find out on her own. Let her enjoy her ignorance of it. Let them both enjoy not knowing. 'Ignorance is bliss' I believe the saying goes."

"But still..."

"They are both in grave danger! She must not know until it is her time to know, or else throw off the balance to everything."

"She could be in more danger not knowing. You saw her freak out at the museum... Percy had to comfort her. She was _crying, _Chiron! I've never seen her cry, not even that one time when she broke her arm."

"True, but remember how much danger they would both be in if they found out before they got there."

"...Yeah... They would be in major trouble...but, I mean, who they are-"

"Shhh."

I had started backing up from the door in horror, and I tripped over my own feet. Something was coming towards the door. It was just like in Percy's story. _He wasn't making it up._

I scrambled up and ran down the hallway as fast as I could, not caring about the noise. I heard clomping, and it sped up. I ran around the corner and up the stairs. I heard the clomping stop and an arrow landed in the wall right next to where my head had been two second before. I ran faster, until I came to my class room and barged in right as the bell rang.

I went to my seat next to Percy, panting, and looked at him with a look of shock, horror, and complete fear in my eyes, though it wasn't on my face so the rest of the kids coulnt's tell. Percy was about to ask me something when the teacher started passing our exams out. I didn't have a chance to tell him.

I didn't know what the heck was going on, I really didn't. But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back.

They thought Percy and I were in some kind of danger.

And it annoyed me.

That afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam with Percy, Mr. Brunner called us back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about either mine or Percy's eavesdropping, or both, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Percy, Jessicah," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's...it's for the best."

His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me, and I'm sure they did Percy as well. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at Percy and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.

Percy mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for either of you. It was only a matter of time."

My eyes stung, with both embarrassment, and anger. Here was mine and Percy's favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling us we couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in us all year, now he was telling us we were destined to get kicked out.

"Right," I said for both of us, trembling.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy, and neither are you Jessicah. That's nothing to be—"

"Thanks," Percy blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me and Jess."

"Percy, Jessicah—"

But we were both already gone.

On the last day of term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase. I walked over to Percy's dorm after, becuase, unlike every other girl there, I only had a few pairs of clothes. Percy was shoving his clothes in his suitcase angrily, and I knew why. We felt the same way.

The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. They looked me up and down for a minute, decided I wasn't interesting, then went back to their conversation. After a few minutes, they asked Percy what he'd be doing this summer and he told them he was going back to the city.

He didn't tell them what I knew: that he would probably have to get a summer job, not one at an actual business of course, and spend his time worrying about where he and I would go to school. He always added my worries onto his.

"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."

They went back to their conversation as if he'd never existed.

The only person I didn't want to say good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, neither Percy nor I had to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as we had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

Percy said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?" _I was about to say that._

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"

Percy confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam. I didn't confess. Percy didn't even know about me eavesdropping. I'd never had time to tell him what I'd heard. I figured that I'd better tell him about it when I could tell him all of it.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"

"Oh...not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"

He winced. "Look, Percy... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers..."

"Grover—"

"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."

"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer."

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like: Grover Underwood Keeper Half-Blood Hill Long Island, New York (800) 009-0009.

"What's Half—"

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."

I could tell that Percy's heart was sinking. Grover had a summer home. He'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy, and I knew it. "Okay," he said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."

He nodded. "Or ... or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?"

It came out pretty harsh.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you. And Jessicah."

I stared at him along with Percy.

All year long, Percy and I had gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without us. And here he was acting like _he _was the one who defended _us_.

"Grover," I said, "what exactly are you protecting us from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover, Percy and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there.

On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of bloodred cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.

I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.

All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses. The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me and Percy. I reached out and grabbed Percy's hand because it was kind of freaking me out.

Percy and I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

"Grover?" Percy said. "Hey, man—"

"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"

"Yeah, both of us. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"

"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."

The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.

"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."

"What?" Percy said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."

"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but we stayed back.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching us. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu. Percy was the same, I could tell.

Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.

"Grover?" Percy asked.

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling me and Jess?"

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like...Mrs. Dodds, are they?"

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. So?" But even as he said it, I knew it was a big deal.

"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."

"What last time?"

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."

"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."

This seemed like a strange request to me, but Percy and I promised he could.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.

No answer.

"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?" Percy asked, oddly insightful.

He looked at us both mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers we'd like best on our coffins.


	4. I Freak Out Once Again

Alright, confession time: we both ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, not to mention Percy was getting freaked out by him, too, by him just _looking _at us like we were marked for death by the Grim Reaper himself, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to the sixth grade?"

Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made us both promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.

Instead of waiting, Percy got his suitcase, and by some unsaid agreement, I followed his lead, then we slipped outside and caught the first taxi uptown.

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," he told the driver.

"So we're ditching him? But we promised," I told Percy, an unexpected wave of guilt rolling up inside of me.

"So?"

"So he's our friend."

"And? Look, okay, he's majorly freaking me out right now."

"Well, me too, but still..."

He rolled his eyes. "Live a little, Jess." He was going to get on my bad side if he kept it up, but I just sighed and slumped a little in my seat.

Now for a word about Percy's mother before I officially introduce her.

Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves both mine _and _Percy's theory that the best people have the rottenest luck. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

The only good break she ever got was meeting Percy's dad.

Percy told me he doesn't have any memories of him, just this sort of feeling of a warm glow, and maybe a trace of his smile. His mom doesn't like to talk about his dad because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.

See, they weren't married. Percy told me that she told him he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.

_Lost at sea_, his mom told him. _Not dead. Lost at sea_. She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised Percy (and pretty much me, too) on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew we most definitely were not easy kids to take care of.

Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we all knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When we were young, Percy and I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe.

I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in old gym shorts inside a bundle of sweaty socks that hadn't been washed for a week.

Between the three of us, we made Percy's mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he, Percy and I got along ... well, when we came home is a good example.

We walked into their little apartment, hoping Percy's mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.

Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home." He glanced at me and said, "And you brought the bratty little beggar with you."

"Where's my mom?" Percy asked.

"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"

That was it. No 'Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?' Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.

He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever we were home, he expected Percy to provide his gambling funds. He called that their "guy secret." It made me very angry that he included me in the "guy secret," considering _I'm not a guy, _but I went along with it anyway because it meant that if either of us two told Percy's mom, he would punch our lights out.

"I don't have any cash," Percy told him.

"Neither do I," I said, doing the same thing as Percy because that's what I always did. I mean, I always told him I didn't have mulah.

He raised a greasy eyebrow.

Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else. "You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he, or she, ought to carry their own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"

Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at us with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."

"Am I right?" Gabe repeated.

Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony. I made a face fully showing my displeasure with the situation.

"Fine," Percy said. He dug a wad of dollars out of his pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."

"Ditto," I told Gabe.

"Your report cards came, brain boy, smarty girl!" he shouted after us. "I wouldn't act so snooty if I were you!"

Yes, my report cards went to their apartment. Well, the orphanage didn't care, so might as well go ahead and send it to the one person who does. Percy's mom.

Percy slammed the door to his room, which really wasn't his room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving our stuff in the closet (yes, we shared a room for the most part), leaving his muddy boots on our windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.

I dropped my suitcase on the bed along with Percy's. Home sweet home.

Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.

But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—some_thing_—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.

Then I heard Percy's mom's voice. "Percy? Jessicah?"

She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.

Percy's mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad, like everyone else does. I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Percy or Gabe. "Oh, Percy." She hugged him tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!" She then turned to me. "Jessicah." She hugged me the same way she hugged him. "You've grown, too! You're much taller! Almost as tall as me!"

Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me and Percy a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when we came home.

We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings and fought over them with Percy, she ran her hand through his hair and demanded to know everything he hadn't put in his letters. She didn't mention anything about us getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But were we okay? Were her little boy and little girl doing all right? He told her she was smothering him, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I knew he was really, really glad to see her.

From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"

I gritted my teeth and saw Percy do the same.

His mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe, and we all knew it.

For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy (I told her that part, not Percy). I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. We'd lasted almost the whole year this time. We'd both made some new friends. We'd _both _done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Until that trip to the museum...

"What?" his mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"

"No, Mom," Percy said. "Remember? Nothing scares Jessicah."

I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid, and Percy didn't seem to want to tell her either.

She pursed her lips. She knew we were holding back, but she didn't push either of us.

"I have a surprise for you two," she said suddenly. "We're going to the beach."

Percy's eyes widened. "Montauk?"

"Three nights—same cabin."

"When?" I asked excitedly.

She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."

I couldn't believe it. We hadn't been to Montauk in forever, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money, because he freaking gambled it all away.

Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"

I wanted to punch him, as did Percy, I knew, but I met Percy's mom's eyes and I understood she was offering us a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.

I was beginning to understand that I could tell a lot of things about Percy and predict his actions better than any normal best friend should've been able to. Weird, we've been doing a lot of the same stuff for a while now, and how we react to things has gotten more similar too.

"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."

Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"

"I knew it," Percy muttered. "He won't let us go."

"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your stepfather is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."

Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip...it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"

_Such a jerk. I wanna freaking KILL HIM, _was all I could think.

"Yes, honey," my mother said.

"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."

"We'll be very careful."

Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."

_Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot_, I thought. _And make you sing soprano for a week._

But Percy's mom's eyes warned us both not to make him mad. Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought? "I'm sorry," Percy muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."

Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in the statement.

"Yeah, whatever," he decided.

He went back to his game, the idiotic moranus. Yes, I purposely said a non-existing word. Get over it.

"Thank you, Percy," his mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about...whatever you two've forgotten to tell me, okay?"

For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if his mom also felt an odd chill in the air.

But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled mine and Percy's hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.

I brushed my hair, waiting, and an hour later we were ready to leave.

Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch Percy lug his mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned Percy as he loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

Like he'd be the one driving. He was freaking twelve for crying out loud. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame Percy.

Watching Gabe lumber back toward the apartment building, Percy did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, he made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a three-clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but we didn't stay long enough to find out.

Percy and I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it. Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

I loved the place. So did Percy.

Percy's mom never exactly said it, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met his dad.

As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples Percy's mom had brought from work.

I guess I should explain the blue food.

See, Gabe had once told Percy's mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like Percy.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Percy's mom told us stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told us about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, Percy got up the nerve to ask about what was always on his mind whenever we came to Montauk—his father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell him the same things she always did, but I knew he never got tired of hearing them. I always felt like I was intruding when this part of the trip happened, but they wouldn't let me go inside by myself. They wanted me to be included too, as if I _were_ family.

"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."

His mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."

"How old was I?" Percy asked. "I mean ... when he left?"

She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But... he knew me as a baby."

"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."

Percy looked as if he felt angry at his father. It was like I knew his feelings... He resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry his mom. He'd left them, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.

"Are you going to send me away again?" Percy asked her. "To another boarding school?"

She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."

"Because you don't want me around?" Percy regretted the words as soon as they were out, I just knew.

My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took his hand and squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."

Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me and Percy to leave Yancy. However, I just sat there awkwardly, listening to the mother-son conversation

"Because I'm not normal," he said.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?" I asked

She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.

During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me and Percy on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed either of us when we told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move, even before I met Percy; after we met, I just had someone to move with.

I knew we should tell him mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about the weird hallucination that Percy had sliced our math teacher into dust with a sword and how I was there and witnessed the whole thing then broke down and cried about it.

But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that. I could see that Percy was struggling with the same dilemma.

"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," Percy's mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."

"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"

"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."

I looked at Percy to see how he would react. I could tell he was obviously confused, trying to figure out why his dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see his birth—talk to his mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?

"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in his eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."

"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."

She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if either of us asked her any more questions she would start to cry.

That night I had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.

I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, _'__No!__'_

I woke with a start, then looked over at Percy. He had also woken up.

Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses.

There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.

With the next thunderclap, Percy's mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door. I looked at Percy with the same scared look that I'd had that day in the museum when I saw what he did to Mrs. Dodds.

Percy's mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.

"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"

Percy's mother looked at us in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.

"Percy, Jessicah," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

I was frozen, looking at Grover, and I had this odd feeling that Percy was too. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. "O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"

I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...

Percy's mom looked at us sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Percy. Jessicah. One of you, tell me now!"

I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Percy stuttered as he said something about Mrs. Dodds, and Percy's mom stared at us, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

She grabbed her purse, tossed our rain jackets to us, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"

Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.

Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves. I nearly passed out, but Percy kept me up, kept me running, and I wondered how I was ever supposed to have been the brave one, the one who wasn't scared of anything.


	5. Percy Vanquishes a Monster

We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn't know how Percy's mom could see anything, what with the storm and all, but she kept her foot on the gas.

Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to Percy in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants. But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal. After I would look at Grover, I'd look at Percy to make sure that he was still there, to make sure he'd still protect me. I can't believe how much I'd been depending on him when I was supposed to be the fearless one.

The I heard Percy say haltingly, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"

Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."

"Watching me?"

"Keeping tabs on you two. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend."

"Urn ... what are you, exactly?"

"That doesn't matter right now."

"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"

Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"

I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat. I looked at him, too shocked to speak.

"Goat!" he cried.

"What?"

"I'm a goat from the waist down."

"You just said it didn't matter."

"Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"

"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"

"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"

"So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!"

"Of course."

"Then why—"

"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are." He leaned around Percy to look at me. "Both of you did."

"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?" Percy asked, ignoring the last part that Grover had said. I was still too stunned to speak.

The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.

"Percy, Jess," his mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."

"Safety from what? Who's after us?" Percy asked nervously.

"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."

"Grover!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"

I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had some imagination, but not much. Percy had zero imagination. I couldn't come up with something like this, and neither could he, so what the hell was happening here? I had no clue.

Percy's mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.

"Where are we going?" I heard Percy ask.

"The summer camp I told you about." Percy's mother's voice was tight; she was trying for his (maybe ours, I'm still not sure) sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."

"The place you didn't want me to go."

I felt like I was in the middle of a private family conversation once again.

"Please, dear," his mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."

"Because some old ladies cut yarn."

"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said.

"But you just said—" Percy started, but Grover cut him off.

"Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you two? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."

"Whoa. You said 'you.'"

"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"

"You meant 'you.' As in me. Or Jess."

"I meant you, like 'someone.' Not you, you."

"Boys!" Percy's mom said.

She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.

"What was that?" I asked, more than a little frightened.

"We're almost there," Percy's mother said, ignoring my question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."

I didn't know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive, and I saw Percy doing the same.

Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn't been human. She'd meant to kill Percy and me.

Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown Percy. Before either me or Percy could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling _boom!,_ and our car exploded.

I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.

I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow." I looked over at Percy and helped him sit back up, thanking whatever God, or gods, or whomever was up there, that he hadn't hit his head too hard.

"Percy!" his mom shouted. "Jess!"

"I'm okay..."

"Me, too," I said slowly and shakily.

I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.

Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to Percy in the backseat was a big motionless lump.

"Grover!" Percy said, trying to wake up his friend.

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. Percy shook his furry hip while I was thinking, _No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!_ Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.

"Percy," his mother said, "we have to..." Her voice faltered.

I looked back along with Percy. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.

Percy swallowed hard. "Who is—"

"Percy, Jess," his mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."

His mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.

"Climb out the passenger's side!" Percy's mother told us. "Percy, Jess—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"

"What?"

Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.

"That's the property line," Percy's mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."

"Mom, you're coming too."

Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.

"No!" Percy shouted. "You are coming with us. Help me carry Grover."

"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.

The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn't be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns...

"He doesn't want me or Grover," Percy's mother told us. "He wants you two. Besides, I can't cross the property line."

"But..."

"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."

Percy was getting mad, then, I could tell—mad at his mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull, and probably mad at me for not being able to do anything. I could see it written all over his face. He was going to do something extreme and stupid.

He climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom." He held a hand out to me and helped me climb out.

"I told you—"

"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."

He didn't wait for her answer. He scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He wouldn't have been able to carry him very far without his mother's aid, and I was just standing there, shivering, like a scared little girl. I was angry at myself, but I couldn't seem to move very much. I wasn't as brave as Percy was, but I'd try to be.

Together, Percy and his mom draped Grover's arms over their shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass with me following close behind.

Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear—I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.

I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us.

But he couldn't be real.

I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"

"Pasiphae's son," Percy's mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."

"But he's the Min—"

"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."

The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.

I glanced behind me again, not noticing that Percy was doing the same.

The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.

"Food?" Grover moaned.

"Shhh," Percy told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"

"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."

As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.

_Not a scratch,_ I remembered Gabe saying.

Oops.

"Percy, Jess," his mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way—directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"

"How do you know all this?" Percy asked.

"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me. Both of you."

"Keeping us near you? But—"

Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.

He'd smelled us.

The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker. Grover was weighing Percy and his mom down. I could maybe get over if I went around them, but I wasn't going to leave them there with that thing charging. The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.

Percy's mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Jessicah! Separate! Remember what I said."

I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the right as Percy went to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on Percy. My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.

He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at Percy's chest.

I wanted to run and scream in fear, to go get help, but I couldn't. I was mesmerized, watching Percy and the charging bull-man-thing. Percy held his ground, and at the last moment, he jumped to the side.

The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me or Percy this time, toward Percy's mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.

We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as his mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.

The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing Percy's mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.

"Run, Percy, Jessicah!" she told us. "I can't go any farther. Run!"

But I just stood there with Percy, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.

"Mom!"

She caught Percy's eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"

Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around Percy's mother's neck, and she dissolved before our eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply...gone.

"No!" Anger was the most prominent feature on Percy's face now.

It was almost enough to make me scared, but it calmed me instead. This guy was getting angry because the monster had taken his mother and he didn't want him to take anyone else that was dear to him, including me, even though I was practically helpless at this point.

The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling our best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.

Percy didn't look like he was about to allow that to happen.

He stripped off his red rain jacket.

"Hey!" he screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"

"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward him, shaking his meaty fists.

He put his back to the big pine tree and waved his red jacket in front of the bull-man. I think that he thought he was just going to jump when the bull-man came running. He didn't exactly think it through, obviously.

The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab Percy whichever way he tried to dodge.

In a split second, almost too fast for me to see, he leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.

_How did he do that?_ I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree so hard it looked like he should've been crushed to death.

The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake Percy. He locked his arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes, but I watched, nonetheless.

The smell of rotten meat was strong even from where I was standing.

The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed him flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.

Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. "Food!" Grover moaned. I hardly paid any attention to him.

The bull-man wheeled toward Grover, however, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. Percy got both hands around one horn and pulled backward with all his might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—snap! The bull-man screamed and flung him through the air. Percy landed flat on his back in the grass.

His head looked like it smacked against a rock. When he sat up, he had a horn in his hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.

The monster charged.

Percy rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, he drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.

The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like Percy's mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.

The monster was gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I ran over to Percy, shivering as I hugged him. He smelled like livestock and his knees were shaking. I could tell he was scared and trembling with grief. He'd just seen his mother vanish. Grover was laying on the ground, needing help, and Percy somehow pushed me off of him, got up, and managed to haul Grover up (with a little of my help, though I'm not too strong, so not a whole lot) and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farmhouse. We were both crying, Percy calling for his mother, but we held on to Grover—we weren't going to let him go.

The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's. I closed my eyes, exhausted and frightened from what had happened, holding onto to Percy's hand, as they both looked down at us, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."

She was talking about Percy?

"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious and so is she. Bring them inside."


	6. Crazy Thoughts

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food. It was really, really weird.

I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blond hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.

When she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"

I managed to croak, "What?"

She looked around, as if afraid someone would overhear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."

Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.

The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.

A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me.

He had blue eyes— at least a dozen of them—on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.

When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance; Percy was sitting next to me in a matching chair, looking like he had just woken up as well. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.

On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry. I grabbed for it, but I was so weak that I almost dropped it once I had it. I saw Percy struggling with his, too.

"Careful," a familiar voice said.

Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week. Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover, not the goat boy.

So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe Percy's mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And ...

"You saved my life," Grover said. "I... well, the least I could do ... I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."

Reverently, he placed the shoe box in Percy's lap.

I peaked over at the box in his lap. Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare. Oh, wonderful.

"The Minotaur," Percy said.

"Urn, Percy, it isn't a good idea—"

"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" he demanded in a slightly hoarse voice. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."

Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"

"My mom. Is she really ..."

He looked down.

I couldn't find my voice to speak, not even to comfort Perce, so I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.

Percy's mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.

"I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm—I'm the worst satyr in the world."

He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.

"Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.

Thunder rolled across the clear sky.

As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that settles it.

Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I'd find tiny horns on his head. But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs. All that meant was Percy's mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.

Percy and I would have to live with ... Smelly Gabe? No. That would never happen. We would live on the streets first. Percy would probably pretend he was seventeen and join the army, and I'd go with him if he did. We'd do something.

Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid—poor goat, satyr, whatever—looked as if he expected to be hit.

I said, "It wasn't your fault." That was the first time I'd used my voice since waking up, so it was very hoarse and crackly. I tried to clear my throat a little bit with not much luck.

"Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you. All of you."

"Did my mother ask you to protect me?" Percy asked.

"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least... I was."

"But why ..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.

"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.

I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies—Percy's mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if Percy's mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay. Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.

After I'd drunk my fair share of the stuff, Grover helped Percy do the same. I guess he was just thinking, _Well, ladies first._

"Was it good?" Grover asked us after Percy had finished.

I nodded, as did Percy.

"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.

"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."

His eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just... wondered."

"Chocolate-chip cookies," Percy said. "My mom's. Homemade."

"Same here," I said, looking at Percy.

He sighed. "And how do you two feel?"

"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards," Percy answered for us.

"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff."

"What do you mean?"

He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table, and then did the same with Percy's glass.

"Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."

The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.

My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Both Percy and I were unsteady in our steps. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn for Percy, but he held on to it. I felt bad that I couldn't help him.

As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.

We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who'd spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.

The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels— what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my stepfather.

"That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron... ."

He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.

First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.

"Mr. Brunner!" I cried.

The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.

"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle." He glanced at me. "I don't expect that you would want to play, Jessicah."

He offered Percy a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at us with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."

"Uh, thanks." I sat next to Percy, who was having a hard time scooting a farther away from him because it was very obvious that this guy had been hitting the happy juice, and I'm sure Percy could tell. Living with Gabe _did _come with the ability to tell when adults had been drinking.

If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.

"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl. She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young lady nursed you two back to health, Percy, Jessicah. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on their bunks? We'll be putting them in cabin eleven for now."

Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron."

She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.

She glanced at the minotaur horn in Percy's hands, then back at him. I imagined she was going to say, _You killed a minotaur!_ or _Wow, you're so awesome! _or something like that.

Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."

Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.

I started giggling. That was one of the funniest exchanges I've ever seen, especially between Percy and a girl.

"So," he said, obviously anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"

"Not Mr. Brunner," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."

"Okay." Confusion was clear on his face as Percy turned to the director person. "And Mr. D...does that stand for something?"

Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at Percy like he'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

"I must say, Percy, Jess," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you two alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper, let alone two of them. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."

"House call?" Percy asked uncertainly. It seemed like he was doing all the talking, but I was a bit intimidated by it all. I was not being very Jessicah-like.

"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you two. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you two were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to...ah, take a leave of absence." I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher the first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.

"You came to Yancy just to teach us?" Percy asked.

Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first, either of you. We contacted your mother, Percy, let her know we were keeping an eye on you and Jessicah in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you two made it here alive, and that's always the first test."

"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"

"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, on the other side of the table, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.

"You do know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed Percy suspiciously.

"I'm afraid not," he said.

"I'm afraid not, _sir_," Mr. D said.

"Sir," Percy repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less, and I could tell that Percy and I had the same opinion of him.

"Well," he told him, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men to know the rules."

"I'm sure the boy can learn," Chiron said.

"Please," Percy said, "what is this place? What are we doing here? Mr. Brun—Chiron—why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach us?"

Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question."

The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.

Chiron smiled at us sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let us know that no matter what our averages was, we were his star students. He expected us to have the right answer.

"Jessicah, Percy," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?"

"She said..." Percy answered for us. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her. She wanted to keep _us _close to her." He looked at me.

"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?"

"What?" Percy asked.

He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so Percy did.

"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."

"Orientation film?" Percy asked.

"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy, Jessicah. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know"—he pointed to the horn in the shoe box—"that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods—the forces you call the Greek gods—are very much alive."

I stared at the others around the table.

I waited for somebody to yell,_ Not!_ But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.

"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"

"Eh? Oh, all right."

Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.

"Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling us there's such a thing as God."

"So it _does _speak. I was beginning to wonder," Mr. D said, looking at me.

"Well, now," Chiron said, ignoring Mr. D's comment about me. "God—capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."

"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about—"

"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."

"Smaller?"

"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."

"Zeus," Percy said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."

And there it was again—distant thunder on a cloudless day. I looked up at the sky, searching for anything that could've made the noise. There was nothing but blue skies.

"Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."

"But they're stories," he said. "They're—myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."

"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson"—Percy flinched when he said his real name, which he'd never told anybody (I only knew it because his mom had told me once)—"what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals—they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come _so-o-o_ far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."

I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called us mortal, as if...he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut. "Percy, Jessicah," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"

I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.

"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," I said before Percy could answer. He gave me a look.

"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, Jessicah Angelos, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys and girls can get over losing their mothers?"

My heart pounded. He was trying to make us angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him, so I just kept quiet because I had this feeling that if I opened my mouth right now that I would say some pretty nasty things to Chiron.

Percy said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."

"Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."

Grover said, "P-please, sir. He's just lost his mother. He's in shock."

"A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with boys and girls who don't even believe."

He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.

My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.

"Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions."

Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.

"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"

More thunder.

Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.

Chiron winked at us. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."

"A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.

"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time—well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away—the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha. Absolutely unfair."

Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.

"And ..." I stammered, "your father is ..."

"Di immortales, Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught these kids the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."

I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.

"You're Dionysus," Percy said before I could give my answer. I shot him a look. "The god of wine."

Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?"

"Y-yes, Mr. D."

"Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"

"You're a god."

"Yes, child."

"A god. You."

He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.

"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.

"No. No, sir."

The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."

"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."

I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.

"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."

Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."

Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson, Jessicah Angelos. And mind your manners."

He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.

"Will Grover be okay?" Percy asked Chiron.

Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been...ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."

"Mount Olympus," I said. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?"

"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, just as the gods do."

"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like ... in America?"

"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."

"The what?"

"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know—or as I hope you know, since you passed my course—the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps—Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods."

"And then they died."

"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either—America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."

It was all too much, especially the fact that I seemed to be included in Chiron's we, as if I were part of some club. As if both Percy and I were included in this we.

"Who are you, Chiron? Who...who am I?" Percy asked.

Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

"Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s'mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.

"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson, Jessicah Angelos. Let's meet the other campers."

The only thing was that he said my last name with the slightest trepidation, like he didn't really want to call me Jessicah Angelos. Maybe it had something to do with the conversation I overheard at Yancy that one night? I wondered about that.


	7. Things Just Got Weirder

Once I got over the fact that our Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour. I made sure to walk _beside _Chiron, as opposed to behind him because I had seen what horses could do out of their back ends on TV and I did not want to experience it first hand. We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the minotaur horn Percy was carrying. Another said, "That's him." I just looked at the kids for a minute, wondering why they were talking about Percy, and in the moment I was staring at them, their attention turned to me and they started whispering things that I couldn't make out. I frowned and trotted to keep up with Chiron (uh, no pun intended).

Most of the campers were older than us. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn't normally shy, but the way they stared at us made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting us to do flips or something, like we were a carnival sideshow of freaks there for their amusement. Plus, knowing the fact that all the satyrs were pretty much teenage boys and they _**weren't wearing any pants**_wasn't exactly the most comfortable feeling in the world.

I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I'd realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. There was a brass eagle weather vane on top that caught the light and blinded me for a second, but I could've sworn I saw a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable.

Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.

"What's up there?" I asked Chiron, hesitating a little. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know. This day had been weird enough without strange attic-monster-alien-god-whatevers staring at me from their nice little perch inside the attic. Percy glanced at me and then looked up to where I was pointing.

Chiron looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."

"Somebody lives there?"

"No," he said with finality. "Not a single living thing."

I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain. Great. There _was _an attic-monster-alien-god-whatever. That just made my day a _whole lot _better. Note sarcasm.

"Come along, Percy, Jess," Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. "Lots to see."

We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a on a reed pipe. Chiron told us the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."

He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.

I watched the campers picking the strawberries and couldn't help but wonder what had possessed them, teenagers, to actually do physical labor. It was unheard of!

Meanwhile, Percy was staring at the satyr playing and I rolled my eyes once I found this out. No use worrying about spilt milk, right?

"Grover won't get in too much trouble, will he?" Percy asked Chiron. "I mean...he was a good protector. Really."

Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horses back like a saddle.

"Grover has big dreams. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable. To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."

"But he did that!"

"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate...ah...fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."

I wanted to protest, now, seeing Percy's behavior as not-so-worrisome as I had before. I mean, none of what happened was _Grover_'s fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If we hadn't given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble. Oops. "He'll get a second chance, won't he?" I finally spoke up.

Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that was Grover's second chance, Jess. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."

"How old is he?"

"Oh, twenty-eight."

"What! And he's in sixth grade?"

"Satyrs mature half as fast as humans. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years."

"That's kind of horrible." I shuddered at the thought of staying in middle school for six years.

"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career..."

"That's not fair," I said. "What happened the first time? It can't have been _that_ bad."

Chiron looked away quickly. "Let's move along, shall we?"

I got lost in my thoughts of all the swords and bows and arrows and shiny and sharp things after a bit, though, and wasn't paying much attention to Percy or Chiron anymore. I nearly wandered off when Chiron grabbed me by the collar and yanked me back out of the way as some campers threw their javelins at the targets that I had wandered in front of in my daze about pointy stuff. _That_ snapped me back to my senses.

Then, suddenly, I heard Percy start talking out of nowhere. "Chiron," Percy said. "If the gods and Olympus and all that are real..."

"Yes, child?"

"Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?" I looked at Percy, wide-eyed as he looked at Chiron expectantly.

Chiron's expression darkened.

"Yes, child." He paused, as if choosing his words carefully.

_No way._

"There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now...until we know more...I would urge both of you to put that out of your minds."

"What do you mean, 'until we know more'?"

"Come, you two. Let's see the woods." As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans or Vikings or whatever. I wasn't good at history, okay?

Then Chiron said, "The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed."

"Stocked with what?" Percy asked suspiciously.

"Armed with what?" I asked, more than a little excited at the prospect of shiny, pointy things that I could hurt things with.

"You'll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own swords and shields?"

"Our own—?" Percy started.

"No," Chiron said. "I don't suppose you do. I think a size five will do for you Percy, and maybe a size one for you, Jessicah. I'll visit the armory later to make the arrangements."

I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory because that's freaking AWESOME, but there was too much else to think about-like the range of weapons I was actually _allowed_ to use and how Percy wasn't happy about the prospect of me having a sword in my hand (which he could get over because this was happening)-so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn't seem to like very much), the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.

"Sword and spear fights?" I asked. I had begun thinking that this was my kind of camp when he had first mentioned weapons, and these fights were exactly my kind of thing. Maybe I got scared around monsters, but sharp objects? Shiny, metallic objects? Hurting people? This is my territory we're getting into now.

"Cabin challenges and all that," he explained. "Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall."

It was all I could do to suppress a wave of disappointment at the non-lethal thing.

Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.

Percy and I shared a quick glance. "What do you do when it rains?" he asked for the both of us.

Chiron looked at him as if he'd gone a little weird. "We still have to eat, don't we?"

I stifled a laugh at Percy's expression, though I was feeling the same way on the inside. However, I wasn't going to show it in a camp full of people that I didn't know.

Finally, he showed us the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I'd ever seen, except for maybe-_maybe_-some of the houses I'd seen in upper Manhattan because some people were just _weird._

Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops. I figured Percy would be happy that there was at least one normal thing to do here, but I knew that I would not be participating with that. I was quite happy with handling lethal weapons, thank you very much. Basketball was a little beyond my comprehension.

In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick. I barely spared a glance for her, thinking she was just another camper and I'd meet her eventually, probably.

The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them. Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.

"Zeus and Hera?" I guessed.

"Correct," Chiron said.

"Their cabins look empty," Percy observed.

"Thank you for that sharp observation, Captain Obvious," I couldn't help by say to him.

"Why, you're welcome, Lieutenant Sarcasm," he shot back. We just glared at each other for a moment before Chiron clearing his throat broke the silence.

"Several of the cabins are. That's true. No one ever stays in one or two," he said, getting back to the earlier question/observation.

Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot. Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty? I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three, along with Percy.

It wasn't high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I peeked inside the open doorway and Chiron said, "Oh, I wouldn't do that!" Percy tried to peek inside with me, but we were standing too close together, with the doorway too small for both of us to look, and I would fall down and take him with me if he tried to lean on me anymore.

Before Chiron could pull me back, though, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come along, Jessicah." He had already grabbed Percy away from the place. I'd have to tell him about it later. It seemed important, for some odd reason.

Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.

Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists. The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar's head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red. However, she had just as bad of an attitude and I got a sudden ache to smack this camper that I did not know, but Chiron was still steering me slightly so I couldn't do anything for the moment.

I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron's hooves. "We haven't seen any other centaurs," I observed. "Don't they live here?"

"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."

"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really..." Percy trailed off

He smiled down at me. "The Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and all that? Yes, Jessicah, I am."

"But, shouldn't you be dead?"

Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. "I honestly don't know about should be. The truth is, I can't be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish...and I gave up much. But I'm still here, so I can only assume I'm still needed."

I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn't have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list. I decided then and there that I would never become a teacher; Chiron did enough 'teaching' in his lifetime than I could ever do so I might as well scratch it off my list.

"Doesn't it ever get boring?" Percy asked.

"No, no," he said. "Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring."

"Why depressing?"

Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again. I frowned at him.

"Oh, look," he said. "Annabeth is waiting for us."

The blonde girl we'd met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven.

When we reached her, she looked us over critically. I got the feeling that she wasn't too terribly pleased with either me nor Percy and for some reason that disturbed me.

I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn't make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn't even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek, as in the ancient variety. There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book. I blinked at it, willing myself to read it, but I simply couldn't and my brain was hurting from the strain now.

"Annabeth," Chiron said, "I have masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy and Jessicah from here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Cabin eleven," Chiron told us, gesturing toward the doorway. "Make yourself at home."

Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it...? A caduceus.

Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center. I couldn't help myself from thinking, _Where's the flood?_

Chiron didn't go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.

I raised my brows at him. "Impressive," was all I said.

"Well, then," Chiron said, ignoring my probably remarkably inappropriate comment. "Good luck, Percy, Jessicah. I'll see you at dinner."

He galloped away toward the archery range.

I stood behind Perce in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren't bowing anymore. They were staring at us, mainly Percy since he was in front of me, sizing us up. I knew this routine. I'd gone through it at enough schools with Percy. He made sure to keep in front of me, as per usual, trying to shield me from the worst of the glares and ravenous looks. Somehow, though, this time it annoyed me. This was a new start and he was being overprotective again, which is normally fine, but this time I could protect myself. I frowned at Percy's back, silently willing him to move, though I did not dare say it out loud.

"Well?" Annabeth prompted. "Go on. Both of you make nice with everyone instead of standing there like a bunch of feral dogs."

So Percy started forward, finally, with me right after him. Of course, he tripped coming in the door and I couldn't catch myself in time so I went down with him. Great. It was the first day and he was already ruining things for me. There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything. I hissed at Percy about how clumsy he was as I stood up slowly

Annabeth announced, "Percy Jackson and Jessicah Angelos, meet cabin eleven.

"Regular or undetermined?" somebody asked.

I didn't know what to say and Percy looked blank as well, but Annabeth said, "Undetermined."

Everybody groaned.

A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward. "Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy and Jessicah. You two can share that spot on the floor, right over there. Sorry, it's not exactly the Ritz."

I smiled in thanks at the guy, trying not to blush.

The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool...and cute. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash, but it was becoming of him. He was actually a little more than cute, he was quite handsome. I quickly pushed the thought form my head.

"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing. She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. I looked at Percy to see if he had noticed, but he was staring at Luke with a hard look. "He's your counselor for now."

"For now?" I asked.

"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently, now engaged in a staring competition with Percy. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."

I tugged Percy away from his competition with Like and looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given us. Neither of us had anything to put there to mark it as our own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn that Percy had won. I thought about making him set that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves and thought better of it.

I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.

Percy and I shared a look. We were obviously thinking the same thing. "How long will we be here?" I asked.

"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."

"How long will that take?"

The campers all laughed.

I frowned. "What? I don't get the joke.."

That seemed to make whatever they were laughing at even funnier.

"Come on," Annabeth told me. "I'll show you two the volleyball court."

"I've already seen it," Percy protested.

"So have I," I added, since Perce seemed to have forgotten about me, which was strange.

"Come on." She grabbed our wrists and dragged us outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing behind us and frowned again.

When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that. You, too, Angelos."

"What?"

She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."

"What's your problem?" Percy said, an angry tone to his voice. "All I know is, I kill some bull guy—"

"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told him. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"

"To get killed?"

"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"

He shook his head. "Look, if the thing I fought really was the Minotaur, the same one in the stories..."

"Yes."

"Then there's only one."

"Yes."

"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So..."

"Monsters don't die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don't die."

"Oh, thanks. That clears it up."

"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they re-form."

"You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"

"The Fur...I mean, your math teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."

"How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?"

"You talk in your sleep."

"You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"

Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.

"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."

I rolled my eyes. I was feeling particularly left out of this conversation, so I started off on my own, leaving the two quarreling behind me. Not even Perce seemed to notice my absence.

Eventually, I found the forge, this huge white building with marble columns and soot-lined walls and chimneys on the roof that pumped smoke over a gable with carvings of gods and monsters. I saw a bronze-colored wheel turning in the river next to the building and figured that that's what powered it. _Huh. So demigods are conservatives._

I walked in without stopping to think about the idiocy of my actions first. My jaw dropped open. There was all sorts of machinery and gears going, people making sharp objects that were meant to impale people with, armor being forged, and so many other things I couldn't identify. The heat was intense and the sounds of hammers on metal and fires crackling was overpowering. I was vaguely aware that I was gaping into a room fool of sweaty guys and girls working hard, then I was being yelled at by a large guy who someone called Jake and was run out of there.

"Okay, that was pretty cool," I said to myself. I couldn't help but wonder what else would happen at this crazy camp.

I sat down by the stream a ways away from the forge, using some of the water to wash some of the sweat off of my face. I loved the feel of the water on my skin, but that was normal. What _wasn't _normal was the girls that I saw in the stream, swimming and playing and doing whatever the heck they were doing. I just kept blinking at them over and over, trying to figure out what I knew about what they were supposed to be, but I couldn't pull up the information in my mind. I shrugged. "Oh well." I tended to have a nasty habit of talking to myself.

A little while later, I found that I wasn't alone anymore. I was just sitting back, enjoying the view, when I heard a voice near my ear. "You new here?"

I spun toward the guy who had whispered in my ear. I could still feel his breath on my neck and I was all tingly from it, though I didn't know why. "Yeah. My name's Jessicah Angelos. What's yours?"

He sat next to me and stretched out his legs, then smiled at me. "Mitchell. You know, you have a pretty name."

"Um, thanks," I said, not used to being complimented, much less on my name. Mitchell had dark, shaggy hair and gray-blue eyes. I really liked his eyes...

"No problem. So, have you been claimed yet?"

"Nope. Just got in a few days ago, though I was unconscious for most of it, so today is my first day out of the hospital."

"Oh, you're that girl who came with that boy who killed the minotaur?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess I am, if you're talking about Percy." I was starting to play with the grass around me, pulling it out blade by blade.

"That's cool. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?" he asked suddenly.

I raised my eyebrows, but didn't say anything negative, since I didn't know if this was a camp thing or something. "I guess, if you tell me how old _you_ are."

"Thirteen," he said, flashing brilliantly white teeth. "Now you."

"Twelve," I answered. "So why did you need to know that...?"

"Oh, just a cabin thing. I'm a son of Aphrodite, and my cabin does polls and things like that."

_Well that explains why he's so gorgeous, _I thought, but didn't dare say. "Oh. Right." I managed a tiny smile. Something in the back of my mind was warning me about Aphrodite kids, but I kept pushing it back because how could anything be wrong with a boy this sweet and well-mannered and good-looking?

"So, you're not in a relationship with that Perry guy you came here with, are you?"

I instantly made a disgusted face and fake-wretched. "Ew. No. He's practically my brother."

"So, you're in no romantic relationship right now?"

"Nooo, I'm only twelve... I'm kind of young for a relationship."

His beautiful eyes narrowed slightly, but I didn't know why. "You are not. Twelve is a perfectly acceptable age to have a boyfriend. Especially if the boyfriend is thirteen."

That nagging voice was back, warning me about Aphrodite and her kids, but it wouldn't go away this time. I frowned. _Wait. I read about something like this... IS HE TRYING TO SEDUCE ME?! I'M ONLY FREAKING TWELVE! _My eyes widened and I glanced at Mitchell quickly before looking at the ground, the stream, the trees in the distance, anything but _him._ "Well, I must be going now, so.." I stood up quickly, wiping my pants off, and ran off, leaving him there.

Once I was gone from there, I could think clearly again. "Well, I'm definitely staying _away _from the Aphrodite cabin," I said to myself. "That was more than a little creepy. I forgot that they can manipulate lust. Sometimes puberty can be a curse." She shuddered, thinking about how that's one of the most evil things a person can do, manipulate their lust and/or love.

Eventually, I found a reliable guy to ask stuff about the camp. He was in Athena, so I didn't have to worry about him trying to manipulate my lust or love or whatever.

After a while, the line of questioning got to where I really wanted it to be. "Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks in the first few cabins."

The guy turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin. It depends on who your parents are. Or...your parent."

"They're both dead. I never knew them. I've lived in an orphanage since forever."

He sighed. Clearly, he'd had this conversation before with other kids. "At least one of your parents isn't dead, Jessicah."

I swallowed. "How can you say that?"

"Because you're here. You wouldn't _be _here if you weren't one of us."

I just looked at him, expectant.

"Right. So, you've been kicked out of a bunch of schools, moved around from school to school, right?

"How—"

"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."

I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."

"You sound like ... you went through the same thing?"

"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."

"Um. I didn't survive the Minotaur, I passed out while Percy killed it."

"Still."

"Wait. What's ambrosia and nectar?"

"The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would've killed a normal kid. It would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you'd be dead. Face it. You're a half-blood."

A half-blood.

I was reeling with so many questions I didn't know where to start, but the guy said he had to go and wouldn't let me ask anything else. I sighed and went to find Percy and Annabeth, thinking that maybe she had some answers.

I finally found them outside a...bathroom? There was a crowd of campers, and I had to push my way through to see what was going on. Annabeth and another girl (who looked really, really pissed) were both soaking wet, but Perce was dry. I was pondering what was going on here when I heard Percy say, "You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth."

Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.

I ran over to Annabeth and Percy. "What the hell happened?" I demanded of Percy, but he was ignoring me in favor of Annabeth again.

Annabeth was staring at him. I couldn't tell whether she was just grossed out or angry, but whaever it was, it wasn't good. I frowned and looked at Percy.

"What?" he demanded. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," she said, "that I want you on my team for capture the flag."

"_Will someone please tell me what's going on here?!"_


End file.
